Piron: Our Grandchildren May Know Peace

Education Minister Shai Piron has expressed pessimism about the odds of true peace between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

Piron told Maariv that he wants peace and thinks Israel should sacrifice for peace. “If I knew that we could end the conflict and make peace with our neighbors by establishing two states for two peoples, and paying the price by giving up communities in Judea and Samaria, I would support that,” he explained.

However, he continued, as Education Minister, he gets reports about the anti-Israel and anti-Jewish incitement in the PA school system.

“Based on what I read in those reports about what’s written in the Palestinian schoolbooks, I don’t believe that we will reach a place where we can sign a peace accord in our generation or our children’s generation,” he warned.

The idea of an interim agreement in which Israel gives up some territory without a full peace accord is not acceptable, he argued, “I am not willing to accept another Gush Katif, where we sacrifice Israeli communities and get nothing in return.”

The Almagor organization for victims of terrorism warned this week that the interim agreement that Israel reached with the PA as part of the Oslo Accords process is what led to the bloody wave of terrorism that followed. By withdrawing the IDF from some territory and allowing weapons imports to PA areas, Israel allowed terrorism to flourish, Almagor head Meir Indor warned.

Earlier this year Israel’s Strategic Affairs Ministry released a report on incitement in PA schools. Examples of incitement included an image of an Arab child being strangled by a snake marked with a star of David, a poem including the line, “Our enemy, Zion, is Satan with a tail,” and alterations to historic images to erase Hebrew writing.